A Hill of Beans
by AManAdrift
Summary: What I really missed in Mass Effect 2 was the option to say to romanceable characters "I'm sorry, maybe I'm in a relationship still, maybe I'm not, but either way I'm not over it." Here's how that conversation might have gone between my own personal Shepard and Tali'Zorah.


"What could I possibly be suggesting? I mean, a young woman gets rescued by a dashing commander, who lets her join his crew and then goes off to save the galaxy? How could she possibly develop any kind of interest in him?"

By the time Tali had finished speaking, Shepard's face had broken into a broad kindly grin that made her devoutly thankful for her face-plate: she let her mouth hang open and felt her breath become ragged and shallow as hope took wing in her psyche. The wings abruptly fell off and a chasm obligingly opened up for it to fall into somewhere around the lower strap buckled around her suit's thorax-piece when his smile faded and shadows appeared behind his eyes. "Oh, Tali…" he began, then looked off to his right where Daniels and Donnelly were undoubtedly trying not to look like they were listening. A flood of embarrassed apology and disclaimer and changing of the subject was abruptly dammed behind her lips as Shepard reached out and — for the first time! she couldn't help hectically thinking — took her by the hand. He gave a twist of the head in the direction of the drive core, then led her back there for a measure of privacy.

"Tali, look, I'm going to level with you," he began, leaning backwards on the railing and staring straight ahead so that the pulses of the drive core illuminated his profile as Tali perched herself on a corner of the console. His Decisive Command Mask has fallen off, she thought, memorising every detail of his drawn expression. He went on:

"Not long after you came aboard, I was talking with Kelly, and she mentioned that… well, that she thought you might be feeling that way about me." He ran a hand down across his lips as he collected his thoughts, and sighed. He turned to face her, and his voice as he went on speaking was soft, and pitched higher than she'd ever heard from him before: "I've thought about… that idea an awful lot since then, especially while we were on the flotilla. And finally I had to admit to myself that you mean… something different to me than, say… Wrex." Tali couldn't help mirroring the quirk of the lips that crossed Shepard's face as he thought of an apposite example, nor the crashing-elevator feeling in her gut as the shadows returned and he frowned again. "But…" he began, and as he paused his mouth set in determination to go on: "…it's Liara."

Tali wanted to scream, but she held herself in and waited to see if there was more. There was.

"I don't know where things are with us: she's changed so much… but from what I can gather she's changed because of what she went through helping to bring me back." He buried his face in his hands, drew his fingertips down to his jawbone, and sighed. He straightened himself, and Tali recognised the look of a captain who has put his doubts aside and made a command decision. "When we're done with our mission, I'm going to go back to Illium and… and see where we stand. But until then, I'm… well, I'm not exactly in the right place to be starting… uh, I mean, getting into a… you know." He tailed off incoherently, then, as Tali was nodding, he added: "I'm sorry, Tali."

She answered immediately: "No, _I'm_ sorry." Shepard smiled as soon as he heard her say it, a smile that turned from wry to rueful as she went on: "It's not like I didn't know you felt this way. I saw the look on your face in her office: when she kissed you; when she wouldn't come with us… Keelah, I remember the way you used to look at her back on the old Normandy: when we were debriefing after Virmire and she wanted to join minds with you, you practically leaped out of your seat!" Shepard laughed sheepishly, relieved to hear indulgent amusement in Tali's voice. Her voice as she went on was quieter: "You were like that right from the beginning… right after Therum. She really got under your skin, didn't she?"

He looked down into a corner. "Yes, she did. She's… well, I'm sure you don't want to hear it."

"No, I do."

He looked sharply up, peering quizzically into her face-plate as though searching for the clue to a riddle. "You do?"

Tali nodded: "I've watched you for so long… The way you've always run around the ship, checking everybody's OK. But nobody checks that you're OK, Shepard. You obviously need someone to talk to about this, so I'm here."

"But…" he began, then had to let his need to choose his words catch up with his need to object. "The way you feel about me… I've _been_ there… You don't want to hear me talk about someone else."

Tali's voice took on the same saucy tone that had begun the conversation: "Well, maybe I just want to find out what you like so I can seduce you away!" She paused. "Seriously, Shepard, I just want you to be happy."

Shepard smiled a conflicted smile at the sentiment, unable to resist the thought _And this is the girl I'm turning_ down _?_ He gave her another searching gaze while he chose his words, then spoke, at first apparently irrelevantly: "There are about four thousand languages spoken on Thessia alone; and as many more on each of the asari colonies. Liara speaks four of them fluently, and ever since that first night we spent together, _so do I._

"The union is… well, it's indescribable." Not that that stopped him. "I know what it's like to _be_ Liara — what it was like, anyway — I can remember the life she led before we met, and it's… it's the life I wanted." His voice gathered speed as he let the thoughts he'd gone over and over tumble out of his mind: "When I was a kid my favourite thing to do was to go somewhere I could be alone and… figure something out. You know? Maybe school work, maybe programming… when I was younger I drove my mom crazy taking my toys to bits to see how they worked. As an archæologist, Liara made that into a _career_ … I figure if it hadn't been for the Mindoir raid I might have been a scholar, or an engineer, something like that. Instead, I became a soldier… I became a soldier so that people can have the lives they want without having them ripped apart. Liara had the life I wanted; she wanted it too. She loved it. I _know_." He tapped the side of his head. "And now… God, did you hear, when she said 'It's been a long two years?' She sounded so _tired_." He pressed hard on his eyelids with his thumb and his two forefingers, as though he could push the tears back in, then forced the words out through clenched teeth: "I ruined her life."

Tali blinked: Shepard's sentiment seemed so alien that suddenly she could not but see all the ways his body was alien besides. She knew intellectually that only a small fraction of the human and asari populations ever served in the military, but quarians had lived under military rule for three centuries. Having to do for an entire population had smoothed some of its harsher edges, but it was still military rule for all that. The notion that the state needed each of its people too much to let them alone, and that it could call on anyone for any service for the good of the community was part of the fabric of her life… she shook herself — a good quarian wasn't just civic-minded, she was also practical. Tali leaned over and activated the intra-ship com.

"Joker? It's Tali."

"Hey, Tali. What's up?"

"The commander's busy right now," she told the pilot, "but he asked me to tell you where we're going next. Get the ship under way, Joker: we're heading for Illium."

"Uh, all right, I guess." Shepard could understand the confusion in Jeff's voice; presently he'd go up to the command deck and reassure the man, but right now he had other things on his mind. His head had snapped up the moment Tali had pushed the button, and now he was looking a dozen questions at her that would have come out incomprehensibly if he'd opened his mouth.

"I'm just doing what my captain would," she told him with a smile in her voice. "I've listened to what's bothering you, and now we're going to do something about it." The smile was replaced with a catch as she looked him full in the face. "Go to her, Shepard. You've helped all of us find answers when we needed them, now it's time…" her voice faltered, but she wrestled it back: "…it's time you found some answers of your own." The look he was giving her, out of eyes that shone with the tears he was still holding in, was threatening to pull tears out of her own eyes, so she made a heroic effort, and jabbed a finger into his sternum. "We've got a tough mission coming up, and I need you _focussed_! You reading me, soldier?" She told him in her best drill sergeant's bark.

Shepard's face didn't quite know what to do, but it finally settled on an appreciative grin and a heartfelt "Oh, _Tali_!" He held out his arms and she folded herself happily into them, not in the way she had and still wanted to, but happily enough for all that. She flattened her hands on his back and felt a vague torque on her helmet as his cheek pulled her hood down on one side. She couldn't feel the cloth of her hood drying his eyes, but she would notice the damp patches later.

"Mmmm…" she mm'ed at length. "You know, this feels much better when you're not wearing your armour."

"Ha!" Shepard's initial bark of amusement at the Return of the Saucy Tone gave way to the memory of the _Alarei_ , and he held her that little bit closer for a beat.

"You know," he said, and they loosened up, leaving their hands on one another's forearms. "When we got to the flotilla, and they called you Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, I knew it was an insult — and I still say you deserve better, by the way! — but… I liked it." He gripped harder. "As long as I have a ship, Tali, there'll be a place for you on her crew."

Tali struggled to get her voice under control: "Right, because when you find someone crazy enough to follow you through the things we've done, you've got to hold on to them!" Almost unconsciously, she glanced down at his hands.

"Exactly!" He grinned. "All right, I'd better go tell Joker you weren't kidding."

She nodded, and he let go, but paused, the freight of everything they'd still left unsaid carried in his eyes. He turned and she watched him walk away.


End file.
